perfect….
Ryan won’t hear of it, though. He tries to act like he’s so different from his mother, but he has a thing about the balcony. “That’s for latecomers, sleepers, visitors and other nonessential folk,” he’d told me in the only imitation I’d ever heard him do of his father. The message hit home. I was all of the above except maybe a sleeper. Pastor Dre wasn’t boring, that much was for sure. If his preaching didn’t keep you up, the reflection of the lights off his cuff links, watch, bracelet and other assorted bling could definitely do the job.
And Hyacynth? Well, let’s just say that though all that stuff in my bathroom was a joke to me, the first lady probably had the real thing in her house. Howard undergrad, Harvard graduate school, Miss Black America two times over. Yeah. That’s what I was dealing with. The few times I’d talked to her she seemed pretty down to earth, though. For a beauty queen, anyway.
There I was, being ugly again and in the house of God at that. My real problem wasn’t with any of these people, but with my scale and my mother-in-law.
Your real problem is with God, I dared to think for just a second. That would have to keep for later, especially with my husband next to me about to break into a sweat.
“Why did Mama have to park in Dre’s space? Can you tell me that? Sometimes I think she just wants some attention.”
You think?
For my husband to be such a computer genius and great businessman, he could be a little dense when it came to his mother. Okay, a lot dense.
I settled myself down into the movie-theater-type chair, wondering for a moment if I’d have been able to fit in it a couple years back. Probably not. Black folks need pews. Room for your butt, your purse, your program and of course, a few inches to swing your mortuary fan if it came down to it. We had fans here. I’d seen them, but I’d never seen anybody use one. It was all about climate control these days.
The service started and no one noticed as I sprang the trapdoor on my nursing blouse. Lily gulped once or twice, but the music was too loud for anyone to hear. Everything seemed to lift off me as the choir sang, that is until the songs ended and they got to the announcements.
Ryan shifted in his chair as the first message blinked across the screen in all caps.
PLEASE DO NOT PARK IN THE PASTOR’S SPACE. IT IS PERMANENTLY RESERVED AT ALL TIMES.
It was all I could do not to laugh and not because it was funny, but because I was terrified. Queen Liz could get a little crazy sometimes and Ryan didn’t do well with public displays of madness. He liked to keep his crazy at home.
As she did in my nightmares, Ryan’s mother stood in the third row, talking to the church secretary as if there weren’t fifteen hundred other people in the room.
It was hard to hear her, but I’d been cut by the Queen’s sharp whispers enough times to make it out.
“I don’t even appreciate that, Pastor. Who gave you that space, anyway? I’ve been parking there for thirty years.”
I looked over to see what Ryan had to say, but it was too late. The brothah had used my exit.
My husband was gone.
Chapter Two
“S ometimes I think you make this stuff up,” Dana said on the phone the next morning as we ran through the updates for her bath-and-body Web site. She had a new product line for babies, called Water Lily. It was based on the products she helped me make for my daughter’s sensitive skin.
Lily hasn’t had one rash since I started using the products and all the moms at church ask me what I did for her. I felt good about that until I realized it meant my baby must have looked bad enough for everyone to have noticed. I told them about Dana’s shop, Made of Honor, and most of them knew about it already since they’re franchised all over Illinois, but she hadn’t made the baby stuff available in her stores yet. Some drove a few hours to Leverhill, unable to wait. Thanks to my daily needling, she’d finally agreed to at least put it on the Web.
The keys clicked under my fingers as I typed the changes she’d given me. “I wish I did make this stuff up, Dane. It’d be a lot funnier to watch on TV or something. But you know what they say, truth is stranger than fiction. It happened just like I told you.”
God must have been with me to let me get some love in before service, because after his mother’s announcement about how that parking space had been hers for thirty years and she didn’t notice the five-inch-tall neon letters saying Reserved for Pastor, I hadn’t gotten so much as a kiss out of Ryan. He’d dived back into work a day early and he’d dived deep.
I’ve only seen the back of him, wandering down the hall, his voice shouting into the phone, since. I must say, though, it wasn’t a bad angle. I could have done without the screaming, though. He needed a management-style makeover. And he needed it, like, yesterday.
Just then, an e-mail from Dana popped into my box with attached photos and descriptions of the new products. I’d twirled the phone cord around my elbow, about to explode with glee. Nothing like a click-chat, where we talk and e-mail back and forth. It drives Ryan crazy, but a man who e-mails people in the same house with him has no room to talk. None. Besides, everybody can’t go blind and break their thumbs on a PDA like him. The prescription on my glasses is strong enough as is without trying to read some tiny screen.
I opened the files and smiled with satisfaction at the product photos. “I really like how these came out. I don’t know why you seem so reluctant about the baby line. It’s some of your best stuff yet.”
I could almost see Dana shrugging two hours away. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess it’s the baby thing. I don’t feel qualified. The wedding stuff I can do in my sleep, though sometimes it’s a nightmare. I’ll have to tell you about our latest bride when we have more time. Remind me. Anyway, I almost feel like this is your line, Tracey. I made suggestions, but you researched everything, tested everything…”
Wow. Dana sounding insecure? Too weird. Too much like we were discussing infertility treatments. “Wait? Are you guys trying to get pregnant or something? Is that it?”
A pause on the line. A long breath. “Yes, we’re trying. Sorry I didn’t tell you. I guess I thought we’d be pregnant the first month and all I’d have to announce was a baby on the way. It’s turning out to be harder than we thought. God knows, though. I guess I shouldn’t have been so concerned when you got pregnant so fast with Lily. You were the lucky one.”
Sometimes I wonder. “Don’t sound like that, okay? Now that I know you guys are trying, I’ll be praying and available for random Googling on any topic you need. You know I’m good for that.”
“Yeah.”
The gaping silence, a rarity between us, widened until we both fell in. Refusing to accept it, I climbed out first. “Okay, I’d love to sit here and quietly contemplate this with you, but the boob buzzer is going to go off any minute now, so if you want to talk about it—”
“I don’t.”
Right. No more than I wanted to talk about the comment Queen Liz gave me after church on Sunday.
“Oh come on, Tracey, what size is that skirt, a fourteen? You’re better than this. I know your mother
